Main navigation

A couple of years the frenzy of Christmas was getting to be too much. I had three kids in preschool, a still relatively new job, and an ever busy calendar of travel and speaking. So I introduced a little weekly Christmas series to refocus me, and maybe you to if you were struggling with the same, called Meaning in the Mayhem.

I’m finding the need to do it again this season. You’ve all walked with our family some, even though I’ve not shared as much as usual, through the harder than average year we’ve had. I am so incredibly grateful for this Christmas season, because I do love Christmas. But I’ll be honest that I’m ready to see 2016 go. We’ve had unemployment and big family changes and sickness, and I’ve had to cut back on some of my “fun” outside activities because of a particularly full plate at work.

This is what I’m finding though as we usher the Christmas season in. I’m unwrapping gifts everywhere. I wrote last week about seeing the miracles, and this Christmas season has been one full of goodness.

We put up outdoor Christmas lights in our front yard in a bigger way than usual this year and the kids (and I) are crazy about driving up to the twinkles and wobbling blow ups every evening.

We had some friends over for a come and go Christmas open house but it turned into a come and stay open house where the adults just laughed and talked and the kids decorated cookies and ornaments. Hours of a house filled with the aroma of cinnamon and friendship.

We sat in the front row at church as little bit performed in the kids church choir to remind us the season is all about that baby. I sang right along in my head because I’d listened to the CD to help her practice for weeks in advance.

The boys run off to hunt this weekend so little bit and I are going to find ways to help others this weekend – dropping Christmas cookies with someone who needs some cheer and finding presents for families struggling to provide this season.

So every week I’ll pop on here in the middle of this season packed with life and goodness and promise with a little vlog. A glimpse into how our small family is trying to set down the busy and chaos and remember why and who we celebrate during this season of miracles.

This is not that stuff you put in turkey kind of dressing. This is Fashion Friday how the heck do you make it through the land mine of weird holiday dressing kind of dressing! We’re going to tackle this a few ways. One is the weirdness of invitations (why do people tease us with ambiguities?) which we’ll discuss next week. Today we play dress up with two of my friends for actual holiday events.

I love this! It’s a S.W.A.P. (Shopping With a Purpose – if you remember those!) on steroids because you’re shopping with a short fuse and a limited budget.

The two holiday dressing scenarios we’re tackling today are diverse: one, a holiday party that is business casual (mercy), and the two, a black tie optional holiday wedding.

I’ve got a gorgeous momma/wife who has to attend her husband’s “casual” holiday office party. But these suggestions could go as well for your own “casual” holiday office party.

What are you most comfortable in? If a skirt, then pair a pencil skirt with riding boots, a red or emerald sweater (I mentioned for our last Fashion post emerald is everywhere and my girlfriend would look gorgeous in this color), and some chandelier earrings. If you prefer pants, then pair fitted black or gray pants, with a silver, ruby or emerald sweater, or even take the blazer route like I did with a festive top.

Here’s a few ideas. For a skirt look (and ignore the length of this skirt, go a bit longer for business), pair a subtle print with plaid scarf and tights for a festive (but not “too”) style for a business party:

Or, pair the traditional Christmas color on bottom, and add sparkle in a Christmas shell:

For a pants looks, either pair the emerald in a pencil pant with fun flats. Think of this outfit as a jumping off place, but add a festive scarf or necklace and amped up top to really tie the look together for the holidays:

Or do a fitted pant with a chunky green sweater layered on top of Christmas plaid with a pop of metallic in the shoe (ignore the handbag – you can do much better!):

Here’s some links to jump start you if you’re shopping for this weekend: A velvet blazer at Macy’s, a hunter party dress from Banana, a metallic loafer from DSW, a statement sparkler necklace from Nordstrom or a Christmas plaid scarf from Kohl’s. This is a just a starter. There are tons of options on the racks right now that would work. Take an hour, pull a bunch of items, and wear what makes you feel pretty and comfortable.

OKAY.

NEXT UP! Black tie optional wedding outfit. My girlfriend is tall and slim (and rarely gets to dress up!), so I begged to dress her for this. She asked for the entire outfit so we’ve got shoes and earrings to go with it. This exercise is simpler. You don’t want to outshine the bride but you still want to look sophisticated and festive. I buy all special occasions dresses at Nordstrom so I didn’t even look anywhere else. Typically, the rule is no white or red for weddings, so I stuck to that rule.

You can’t miss with floor length black so both of these options are sophisticated options (JS collections on sale for under $200 and I’m in love with everything Aidan Mattox does though he can be pricey when not on sale).

Any deep colors like midnights and hunters and cranberries would all be gorgeous for a winter formal wedding. This navy back cut out number from Vera Wang is on sale. And asymmetrical hems like the one on this Nicole Miller, which are all over the place this season, might be the perfect solution for my girlfriend who runs into the problem of dresses hitting her in all the wrong places because of her height. My recommendation is order at least four dresses because you get free shipping and will never know what works until trying it on.

For shoes, as long as you stick to a dark neutral dress, feel free to kick it up a notch with your heels. I’d go with a metallic sandal with a classic embellishment like this bow ($60 at DSW). Pair your dress with a stylistically similar (classic with classic, modern with modern, etc.) drop or chandelier earring (as long as there’s no sparkle on the bodice of your dress) like these for less than $50 at Nordstrom’s.

And join us next week as we tackle some of the more confusing invitation suggested “attire” we’ve seen (and send me your crazy invitation “attire” codes)!

They’d asked us to stay. It was late Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving, and little bit and I were about to set off for home while the boys stayed on to hunt. Bray and his family urged us to stay for dinner and head home in the morning. I had all the Christmas decorations to get up this weekend, I pushed back, and little bit and I headed out. In the middle of the night, she started vomiting. And every half hour after, she’d shoot up and lunge over the trash can. I pulled her hair back and gave her ice chips and prayed, feeling rather peaked myself.

The eldest had a stomach bug earlier that week, as had our close family friends. When I checked in with Bray in the morning, he’d been up all night with the baby with the same thing. Terrible bug, I told myself, and tried to keep her calm and rehydrated. My friend who’d just been through this texted: only worry about dehydration when she was sick at both ends; that’s when it’s dangerous. Just then, that’s exactly what started happening with my girl. The clocked blinked 10:45 am and I called our pediatrician’s after hours line. As soon as I informed the nurse, she asked me to hold, and then popped back on the line, “How far are you from their office?,” she inquired. I told her 10 to 15 minutes. She reminded me they had Saturday morning hours until 11 am but they were holding the office for us. “Go now,” she instructed.

Off we went, little bit in pajamas holding a trash can, and me in eyeglasses and stained yoga pants.

Turns out, she not only had a stomach bug, but a nasty case of strep throat (her third in as many months) which required a painful shot in the bottom. We were the last weary family to trudge out of the office at noon. Instead of prepping for a Christmas open house and decorating as I planned, me and little bit laid fairly immobilized for the next 24 hours. I had a lighter version of her bug (minus the strep) as did our entire family, including our cousins from Thanksgiving.

How terrible, colleagues remarked when I trudged off to a work trip to D.C. No, no, I quickly replied, it was a series of miracles.

What if we hadn’t gone home on Friday night? We’d have been at the ranch without doctors or the resources of home.

What if my friend hadn’t texted me right before she got even sicker? I might not have recognized the dangers of how rapidly she’d dehydrate with the escalation.

What if she hadn’t gotten so much sicker for thirty more minutes? We’d have missed seeing the doctor and not known it was also strep throat which required a heavy dose of antibiotics.

At every turn, there are miracles we miss out on because we’re not looking for them.

We see the negative instead of seeing how we were rescued from far worse.

We don’t see the miracles because we’re not looking for them.

They’re everywhere.

Yesterday, exhausted and overwhelmed with all that was on my plate, I begged my assistant to get me on an earlier flight out of D.C. tonight so I wouldn’t get in late. She reported the change would cost $400. I sighed, realizing I’d never incur such a charge, and resigned myself to another late night.

Then, today, a front approached D.C. I got to the airport, with more than three hours to spare, and saw my flight had been delayed. Hoping without really hoping, I went to the earlier flight’s check in counter and asked if I could get on the earlier flight. The kind attendant looked at what must have been a sad and exhausted face (I hadn’t slept a wink last night) and said, “Your flight is delayed, I’ll move you to this one for no charge.” It took every bit of restraint I had to keep from leaping over the desk to kiss the man.

Had I gotten what I wanted when I wanted it, it would have cost $400. Instead, bad weather and a flight delay, delivered an early Christmas miracle.

Boom, another miracle right there.

For the first half of our flight, everyone was instructed to stay in their seats as we flew through the storm. Including flight attendants. Bumping along the way, I cracked open The Broken Way by Ann Voskamp which is redefining how I see beauty in brokenness and calling me to a more poured out, generous life.

She shared a conversation she had with a friend about Peter stepping out of the boat to walk on water to Jesus and him sinking instead:

Maybe Peter really doubted that Jesus believed in him… Maybe it isn’t enough to believe in Jesus – maybe I have to believe that Jesus believes enough in me to choose me. If Christ has chosen me, can He not believe in me?… Jesus didn’t just calm one storm – He can calm all our storms. Jesus sings grace in the wind, He pours mercy out like rain, He grows abundance up through the broken cracks of things like wheat… He comes as a sign to us, a sign of the cross, a sign God’s reaching for us, believing in us, in love, in redemption, in making all things new, in making us enough because He is.

And just like that, the bumps stopped. Out of the windows, where I hadn’t been able to see anything, the thick clouds cleared. The beauty of the clear blue sky and the sunset and the lighter clouds below stunned me with their miraculousness. Ann wrote, in the very next sentence, He comes like light through rain coming down. “Come, follow Me – come, I believe in you – because I’ve come to live in you.”

We have to believe. We have to see the miracles.

He believes in us and wants to fulfill the plans He has prepared in advance for us to do (Eph 2:10).

Oh, I pray this season we would spot the miracles happening around us every single day. That our senses would find the wonder in how He orchestrates all of these things for a purpose and for our good (Jeremiah 29:11, Romans 8:28).

All of these moments: a miracle (Oxford: “a surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency…”).

Every November, my girlfriend invites me to the Saks Fifth Avenue/Nutcracker Market Fashion Show and Lunch. I love it so! Everything they wear is well out of my budget, but you can easily spy trends for fashion and particularly for those holiday events creeping ever so close! In today’s Fashion Friday, we’ll explore the trends from the Nutcracker Market fashion show and you’ll be ready to shop holiday runway trends on Black Friday!

This year, our table universally agreed most of the trends were lovely (unlike last year). There were classic lines and beautiful feminine touches that made the runway pop. Here are a few of the top features we picked out:

1. Classic reds and greens for the holidays. The evening gowns they featured were in rich emeralds and ruby reds. Now I’ll admit I’m a sucker for classics around the holidays but everyone agreed these pieces were stunners.

2. Another featured set of “it colors” were midnight blues and blacks. Again, a return to classic instead of shock wear (which isn’t only beautiful but more flattering).

3. The final color featured was bubble gum pink. While most at our table like the styles featured, we did not care for this color trend AT ALL. Not only do most folks not look great in this color, it feels a little too much like Barbie for my taste.

4. When it comes to cut and style, there were two features. The first trend was femininity. Lots of lace, sequins, flowing skirts, tulle, and even pretty details on the high heels. The second trend was classic lines. Column dresses. Full skirts. Trousers. Gorgeous and timeless.

5. In keeping with number 4’s femininity, we saw a definite trend toward embellishments and pattern. Think floral dresses, for winter, faux fur (and real fur, not my thing), and patterns or flowers/bows/etc down to the top of your shoes.

6. One trend the table really noticed was black pantyhose. Now I know we’ve had the general pantyhose discussion here before, but I have to admit I like the trend of black stockings for the holidays. I think it makes the whole outfit feel “fancier!”

The good news is the winter/holiday trends are beautiful. So wear your femininity with pride if you’re girly like I am, or opt for clean lines and sophisticated color palettes if you like to feel super modern.

We walked down the hall and stepped onto the escalators. Then we rounded a corner and into an elevator with a kind young man who checked our passes to make sure we were allowed. I’m sure I didn’t have the look of someone who was allowed. Certainly not one who’d been let behind the curtain before.

We stepped off the elevator and into a lovely suite. They poured us drinks and offered us food and allowed us time to chat around a dinner table before the show. We happened to sit across the table from a nice couple. When I asked if he was in a law department, he humbly replied he was the CFO of a major energy company. We talked about his new twin grandchildren and then slipped out of the suite into our court side seats to await Adele.

I turned to our host as we walked onto the floor of the stadium to find our seats and shared how all this had me gobsmacked.

I am not fancy.

Now don’t get me wrong: I really like fancy, but I’m not fancy.

I actually make tuna noodle casserole. (And like it.) We’ll buy wine for less than $10 at the CVS. I might wear a sweater that’s piling because buying a new sweater isn’t that exciting or in the budget. We don’t eat out. We go on a vacation once every other year and it’s to national parks. And we certainly never go to mega concerts (because our kids being in private school is like a lifetime supply of concerts).

I grew up with just the basics.

People were kind to the kids of pastors. Food would show up along with new book bags in the fall. Later, people were equally kind to the kids of the divorced single mom active in her local church. Everything from ’80s pantsuits to Thanksgiving turkeys would show up on our doorstep.

All through high school and college I worked – as a maid and nanny and babysitter and secretary. I didn’t have a car until the month before I started work at a law firm after graduating from law school. If we took a Spring Break “vacation,” my mom scrimped and saved to take us to the Holi-dome in town (the Holiday Inn with a dome to accommodate the indoor pool), and the fanciest dinner I had was at the Red Lobster.

I am now in my 40s. Sometimes I think I’m a little fancy now. But I’m not.

I was the shy poor kid who worked hard and kept her head down. I never thought I’d be a lawyer. Or get married and have super cool triplets. Or go to work for a global energy company.

I certainly never thought I’d be hanging with a CFO in a suite before seeing a superstar.

And even though every now and then I stay at an upscale hotel or have a luxury business dinner, I never get over it. I still step out onto the concert floor agog and wide-eyed. Or I elbow my dinner mate to see if she saw the price listed next to the entrée fish, and I take pictures of my hotel room (oh yes, ask my girlfriends, I’ll text them a room picture with caption, can you believe this?).

So it’s important to me my kids understand how others live. How people like me used to live. It’s why we participate when our church has family serve events. They need to know we share responsibility to feed kids who don’t have meals on the table. They need to feel what it’s like to put their money into mission work that builds schools. We collect our best books and candy for donation drives and talk about why God calls us to share what He’s given to us.

That doesn’t come easily. When you grow up with needs and uncertainty, there is an inclination, at least for me, to hold onto everything out of fear of being without. But I am trying to change. And it’s easier to change now since I want to raise my kids to live generously. To naturally want to help others the way so many helped my family growing up.

I pray I never grow accustomed to fancy. That I have these experiences rarely enough to stay gobsmacked. And that I limit when and how much my children experience so they can know the same kind of wonder when blessed with a rare experience like a concert or an upscale meal or a travel adventure. I pray, even more, we would find even more joy in giving to others, than receiving ourselves. Gobsmacked and generous people.

Primary Sidebar

Welcome

Come on in. I have a reservation just for you. I know life is busy. I would love for us to step out for a relaxing lunch but schedules don't always allow. So let's pop open that salad or sandwich sitting in front of our computers, and we'll have lunch right here. A few minutes is all we need to connect to community.